Inventing a Proletarian Fiction for China: The Stalin Prize, Cultural Diplomacy, and the Creation of a Pan-Socialist Identity

Abstract

In the early 1950s, the three most-translated Chinese novels were Ding Ling’s (1904–1986) Taiyang zhao zai Sanggan he shang ^{n over the} Sanggan River, 1948), Zhou Libo’s (1908–1979) Baofeng zhouyu (Hurricane, 1948), and Cao Ming’s (1913–2002) Yuandong li The Moving Force, 1948). Between 1949 and 1954, Ding’s great land reform novel was translated into at least nine different languages of the East bloc, while translations of Zhou Libo’s book appeared in Bulgaria (1953), Romania (1953), Hungary (1951), Czechoslovakia (1951), Poland (1953), Eastern Germany (1953), Albania (1955), Mongolia (date not known), and of course, the Soviet Union (1950). Cao Ming’s short novel was made available to readers in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, and Korea.¹ Ding Ling and Zhou Libo were both awarded the Stalin Prize for their works in 1951; their novels have received wide acclaim and are constantly reprinted as “Red Classics” in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today. In contrast, Cao Ming was virtually unknown in China when her works were translated, and she has since slipped into almost complete obscurity. Why was her novel chosen for propagation and translation, and how did an author little known in her native country become—for a short time—one of the stars in the universe of transnational socialist literature? The answers for these questions, I argue, must be sought in the logic of cultural diplomacy in the socialist world.²